After years of cop shows which do their best to portray the police as honest and law abiding people, its about time one came along to suggest that all is not as rosey as you’d maybe like to think. Okay, it’s a little OTT with lead cop Vic breaking the rules almost every week, and a little over macho too, but as American imports go, its far more intelligent than most, and usually pretty damn fun stuff.
Harry Hill’s Tv Burp (10.30pm, Thirsdays, ITV)
It’s always great to see Mr Hill on our tv screens, and this is the first funny show ITV have shown in years. But, and yep, there always was going to a but here – it’s just too easy. Too obvious. Each week Harry reviews the week’s programmes and just takes the piss out of the dumbest shows, which are usually the soaps. There are thankfully moments of inspired lunacy, just not enough of them, and I’d have much preferred a move back to surreal sketches and stand up.
The Vicious Circle (11.30pm, Sundays, C5)
Created by Victor Lewis Smith, this tv review show at least tried to do something new, but was horribly, horribly flawed. Based around the idea that five well known tv personalities, discuss a television programme live on air for an hour, the problem is that most of the guests are tiresomely dull, all shout at each other throughout, desperate for their trivial point to be heard, and in spending an hour reviewing the same show, end up repeating themselves over and over again. And what could have been rather special has turned out to be quite possibly the worst programme ever devised.
TLC (9.30pm, BBC2, Mondays)
All too obviously the British version of the amiable but not particularly great Scrubs, this has a nice surreal edge too it, not too predictable comedy moments, and a great cast too which includes The League of Gentlemen’s Reece Shearsmith, Alexander Armstrong (funny for the first time in, well ever infact) and Tim Brooke Taylor. It’s never going to be deemed a classic, but its certainly worth setting the video for.
But no. Oh no. Because somehow Coogan, and co-writers Peter Baynham and Armando Iannucci have truly messed things up. That’s not to say that it isn’t at times funny, that there isn’t one or two great moments per episode, but they’ve taken one of the greatest comedy creations of the last decade and turned him in to something which is too predictable, too obvious, full of catchphrases and you can see them a mile off comedy moments. Alan’s bizarre European girlfriend, who finds the most trivial things funny (which at least explains why she finds Alan attractive) is a one note joke that stopped being
It’s strangely nice to see Alan a little more successful, with a better spot on Radio Norwich and his own cable gameshow too, though it was disappointing not to see any of that, though I hope that will feature in later episodes – if it doesn’t, it’ll be yet another missed opportunity. But it seems less funny as a result and you soon find yourself missing the old unsuccessful Alan. The Linton Travel characters are much missed too, bar Michael who’s returned as a garage checkout boy, but he seems a little out of place working there, and Alan’s moments there seem tacked on and largely redundant.
It’s lacking some of the more surreal or bizarre moments (especially Alan’s obsession with ladyboys), or moments of hilariously non-sensical dialogue too. And just isn’t as good as it should have been. Many suggested that Coogan had lost his way, what with the distinctly average The Parole Officer, and horribly unfunny Dr Terrible’s House of Horrors, and this really doesn’t offer any hope that he hasn’t.
The Chris Moyles Show (7pm, C5, Weeknights)
I’ve never paid much attention to his Radio 1 show, and after seeing this now never will. Just when you thought that the whole laddish culture was slowly dying off, Moyles appears with his tiresome and supposedly cheeky brand of semi-misogynist humour in a show which is sadly just a rather insipid and uninspired mix of TFI Friday and The Eleven O’ Clock Show, two programmes which were cancelled long after they reached their sell by date.
Laziness is the order of the day here, with a set which is remarkably similar to that of TFI’s, and a format which has been seen too many times before too. Tv doesn’t get much cheaper than this either. All of the guests I’ve seen on the show so far are of the variety who appear on every low rent chat show (Today with Des and Mel, Liquid News, V Graham Norton etc, etc.) or aren’t properly famous anyway (one show this week featured Miss Net World for christsake), and that’s if they have one at all. The rest of the programme is made up of either Moyles hassling members of the public, or reviewing the days newspaper headlines to startling unoriginal effect.
Throw in a couple of TFI style audience participation games, and, well, that’s pretty much all you’ll get – and that’s on a good day. Five have claimed that they intend to become more highbrow, produce programming which wont insult it’s audiences intelligence, but as this is one of the first new productions, it seems that this has just been one big fat lie.
The Soprano’s (10pm, Thursdays, E4)
It’s not that it’s got shockingly worse or anything, but for the first time I’ve got that seen it all before feeling with this admittedly normally wonderful show. Tony seems to have learnt little from his three years of therapy (bar that it’s okay to hate your mother), and still struggles to contain his anger or deal with the complexities of being a mafia boss and family (in the non-mob sense) man.
The scenes between Tony and Dr Melfi have always been the strongest in the show, complex, unafraid to be intellectual and really delve in to often difficult and disturbing area’s, and whilst this still partly applies, there seem to be so few of them recently, and the show as a whole has really suffered. There’s a real feeling of the show being on autopilot, and it’s become far too repetitive - once again the FBI have managed to find a reluctant informer (Christopher’s girlfriend Adrianna this time around rather than the much missed Pussy), Junior is only now going to court to defend the charges brought against him in the second series, Carmela is still struggling to come to terms with being the wife of a mob boss, and, well, so far Meadow and AJ seem to have been forgotten about, reduced to minor supporting roles who do little other than glare at their parents from time to time.
It’s still a great show, don’t get me wrong, with some sparkling dialogue and fantastic moments which will remain with you long after the credits have rolled. Certain episodes are as great as those found in the first two series – there’s just a distinct feeling of laziness here, a certain if it ain’t broke don’t fix it attitude, but what made the show so great in the beginning was the innovations it brought to a ridiculously over explored genre.
Show creator David Chase has stated that he only wants the series to last five seasons, and I really hope that he isn’t seduced by a seven or eight figure paycheque in to running it in to the ground. As it is now, The Soprano’s will be remembered as one of the all time great tv series. But only if they realise that the story has a finite length, and that all good things must come to an end – and before the audience has long become bored of it.
So here we’re given yet more pretentious wannabe’s inflicted upon us, but unlike in Big Brother or Survivor, all of these are just so desperate to be famous despite having no talent other than a vaguely
It’s all too po-faced, desperate to be cool and serious for my liking – reality tv works best when its tongue in cheek or slying mocks it’s contestants (Big Brother, I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here) but presumably here we’re supposed to just love the assorted idiots. It all feels a little fake too. Shots of the housemates finding out that they’re going to the Fame Academy are all filmed, so surely the reactions are for the camera, and not genuine in the slightest, and the same applies with the revelations of the three possible candidates for the twelfth place in the academy, as we later learn that it’s been rehearsed previously.
Out of all the contestants, there’s not one that I want to see gracing the pop charts, or on my tv ever again. There’s no sign of a Darius (the true king of Pop Idol not due to his vocal ‘talents’ but because he provided the most entertainment), Gareth, or even a Will. And now that Hearsay have just split up after one successful album and one comically amusing failure, you’d have thought that the audience would tire of seeing supposed members of the general public (though about 7 of them have previous tv or musical experience) desperately trying to attain fame and adoration. And hopefully poor viewing figures will prove this to be true.
There are some unintentional comedy moments - one of the assembled pretentious twats claimed "I’m a sensitive soul, even the rain makes me cry if I’m in the right mood’ though that just sounds like manic depression to me – but not barely enough to make this worth tolerating. There’s not an ounce of originality on display here, and the prize, which is valued at £5 million, is not only a sickening waste of the license fee, but yet another reason why the it’s ridiculous that we should be forced to pay the licence fee (for more on this, see Chris Denton’s The BBC – Time To Go article).
Fame Academy? Cunt Academy more like. And whilst that might not be big nor clever, neither is this, and it doesn’t deserve more inventive criticism.
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